So, here's some of the voice files just slammed up against each other. You can both visually track how unusual WL's frequencies are, but you can also hear so much more clearly how the different recordings grate on your ears. Listen to it with headphones and you'll see what I mean. When you hear lines from the UK<->US studios, there's this weird pressure as your ears try to adjust - and it's so much worse when you go from either of them over to Wuk.
Perhaps a bit of a tangent, but it's really shocking coastal liberals don't see how racist this actually is.
The simple matter is that to have a set of political beliefs, and to act upon those beliefs, is an active thing that requires effort and engagement. There are plenty of progressives or liberals or what-have-yous that find the portrayal to be cartoonishly reductive if not outright offensive stereotyping, but they're dwarfed by the number of "progressives" and "liberals" who are just using those words as tags in their social media bios.
Think about how "RINOs" is a well-defined thing: the sentiment is people who are not conservative but who claim to be conservative. Same thing, obviously, happens here. If you think it through, it's extremely hard to reconcile "authentic voice actors" with "caucazoid from kentucky with a british surname," but you're making the assumption that people are thinking.
Keep in mind Yoshida only made that statement because he was basically forced to say something.
There's some interesting things here. For example, the first paragraph of that English script mentions specifically Wuk Lamat and the voice acting. But it has a different tone from the German in a weird way. It suggests that they asked him, specifically, about WL and mentioned the VA. However:
Wuk Lamat ist eine zentrale Figur von Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail und erhitzt die Gemüter der Community. Es gibt einen lauten Gegenwind zu diesem Charakter, unschöne Kritik ihrer Synchronstimme, aber auch seriöse Fankritik an ihrer Geschichte und Implementierung generell.
~"Wuk Lamat is a central figure from FF14: Dawntrail and has raised tempers in the community. There's a large blowback to this character, nasty criticism of her dubbed voice-actor, but also serious fan-criticism of her story and implementation in general."
It doesn't sound like this is actually being said to Yoshi, particularly given the next sentence:
Wir haben Naoki Yoshida bei der Gamescom 2024 getroffen und ihn gefragt, welches Feedback bei ihm und dem Team ankommt, wie man es filtert und was die Idee hinter dem Design von Wuk Lamat ist, für die der Spieler als eine Art Mentor agiert.
~"We met YoshiP at Gamescom 2024 and asked him what kind of feedback he and his team have received, how one filters through it, and what the idea behind the design of Wuk Lamat is, for whom the player acts as a sort of mentor."
So it's unclear if any of the controversy regarding the VA was actually brought up in-question to him, or if it was just mentioned in the article's header. Though this sentence sticks out:
Den Vorwurf, einzelne Personen würden eine Agenda unterbringen wollen, lässt er nicht gelten:
~"He doesn't accept the accusation that individuals could have wanted to advance an agenda."
Which would suggest that more specific, pointed questions were asked - because why else would he dismiss the idea that individuals were trying to advance something?
It's more likely that the interviewer asked stupid questions, but the possibility does exist that he brought it all up somewhat-unprompted. Unless there's a video of it somewhere I missed.
